Turkey’s deputy prime minister offered an apology Tuesday for the government’s violent crackdown on an environmental protest, a calculated bid to ease days of anti-government rallies in the country’s major cities.
The message was a bit mixed, however, as hundreds of riot police deployed with water cannons around the prime minister’s office in the capital of Ankara.
Bulent Arinc, who is standing in for the prime minister while he is out of the country, said the crackdown was “wrong and unjust.”
“In that first (protest) action, the excessive violence exerted on people who were acting out of environmental concerns was wrong and unjust,” Arinc said. “I apologize to those citizens.”
Yet the impact of his statement was unclear. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is visiting Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, has undermined previous statements by his ministers and has dismissed the protesters as a fringe minority stirred up by the opposition.
Tens of thousands of mostly secular-minded Turks have joined anti-government rallies since Friday, when police launched a pre-dawn raid against a peaceful sit-in protesting plans to uproot trees in Istanbul’s main Taksim Square. Since then, the demonstrations have spiraled into Turkey’s biggest anti-government disturbances in years.
A 22-year-old man died during an anti-government protest in a city near Turkey’s border with Syria, and officials gave conflicting reports on what caused his death.
Police have been accused of using disproportionate force in trying to break up demonstrations. In a boisterous debate in Parliament, Interior Minister Muammer Guler defended police officers’ use of tear gas against demonstrators trying to reach government buildings.
“Should we have allowed them to march and take over Parliament?” he asked. “We do not have the luxury to allow illegal acts and will never have that luxury.”
Guler, the interior minister, said protesters had destroyed CCTV cameras around Taksim, and the vandalism would make it harder for the government to detect abuse by police and identify perpetrators.
The Turkish Human Rights Association said some 3,300 people nationwide were detained during four days of protests, although most have since been released. At least 1,300 people were injured, the group said, although it said the number could be higher.
Protests have been directed at what critics say is Erdogan’s aggressive and authoritarian style of governing. Many accuse him of forcing his conservative, religious outlook on citizens’ lives in this mainly Muslim but secular nation. Erdogan rejects the accusations, says he respects all lifestyles.
Sirri Sureyya Onder, legislator from a Kurdish party who became a hero to many for standing in front of bulldozers to prevent the destruction of trees in Istanbul’s Taksim square, called on demonstrators to continue protests in a more festival-like manner.
Both Onder and Arinc spoke after a meeting with President Abdullah Gul who, contrary to Erdogan, has praised the mostly peaceful protesters as expressing their democratic rights.
The Hatay province governor’s office initially said the man who died, Abdullah Comert, was shot Monday during a demonstration in the city of Antakya. It backtracked after Hatay’s chief prosecutor’s office said an autopsy showed Comert had received a blow to the head and there was no trace of a gunshot wound.
Gov. Celalettin Lekesiz did not respond to a journalist’s question as to whether the man may have died after being hit in the head by a gas canister.
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